Tag: E-marketing report

Diving into social media with the right strategy is like a never-ending road trip. Here are some tips

Adopting the right kind of social media plan, using the right channels, deciding on the right target audience and channelizing the right kind of communication are various action-oriented insights that one has to work on for a successful social media strategy.

Put simply, every action you take on social networks should be a part of a larger social media marketing strategy. That means every like, tweet, reply, share and comment should all be guided by a plan and driving towards pre-determined goals.

To create a social media marketing plan from scratch, the first step is to create social media objectives and goals. As social media channels continue their meteoric rise, the push for organisations to adopt social technology increases as well.

Be SMART about it

Here are some common examples of goals and objectives for an organisation’s social engagement plans and how these can be tied together with its marketing plan in 2016. These objectives are S.M.A.R.T., i.e. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Oriented.

The next step is to choose and prioritise your social network channels. When it comes to choosing the social media channel or platform you should utilise, follow the principle of choosing wisely. To begin, frame your evaluation of each channel or platform with the following questions: What is the unique purpose of this channel or platform? Does the channel or platform relate to my business needs? Which target audience does this channel or platform serve? How much time on this network is necessary to have the best impact?

You can also judge the value of a social network based on how well it fits your content and strategy. Here’s a helpful way of looking at it. Encourages dialogue, conversation networks: Twitter and Facebook; Business-focused networks: LinkedIn; Image-based networks: Pinterest, Instagram; Video networks: YouTube; SEO and authorship networks: Google+; Location-based networks: Foursquare

Remember to fill out your profiles completely. One of the great benefits of having a fully filled-out social media profile is that visitors know that you are serious about engaging with them. Before you publicise your presence, one must have minimum 15 to 20 posts. This helps visitors to know what type of content you’ll be posting and shows them that you’re established and invested on the channel already.

Keep talking

One must also aim for consistent posting and talk about trending topics. Respond to conversations and keep them going by responding in a way that your audience is excited to talk more, interact more. Keep it consistent and moving. Perhaps the most vital reason for participating in social media is that you get exposure to consumers, clients, prospects, industry leaders and competitors. It actually implies that there’s a wealth of information already available to you which you can incorporate into your social media marketing strategy. This is your baby step to know and explore your path wisely.

Consumers can also offer social media inspiration. How? Simply see how they respond to your promotions, notice what they like, share, tweet and why. Never forget, consumers, clients, prospects buy from those they know, like, and trust. Social media is a way to add value, boost your credibility, and build trust with ideally matched contacts. Always put relationships first because that is the basis of social media marketing. Smart selection of plans based on what your competitors are doing with their social media platforms can also play a pivotal role in your social media strategy. Do get inspired by industry leaders if you feel blank on what lies in the future of your social media strategy.

Above all, any strategy that focuses on providing value, boosting credibility and building trust can bring a paradigm transformation in terms of business excellence. Create a content plan and editorial calendar, create a content strategy. Creating a buzz around your content is essential to expanding social media reach and engagement. Your content marketing plan on social media should focus around these points. What type(s) of content do you intend to post and promote via social media, this year? How often will you post the content? Whom do you wish to target for each type of content? How will you promote the content?

A safe strategy to follow is the social media rule of thirds. One-third of your social content promotes your business, converts readers, generates profit. One-third of your social content should surface and share ideas and stories from thought leaders in your industry or like-minded businesses and one-third of your social content should be based on personal interactions and build your personal brand.

A social media content calendar should organise the way you curate and create content, and help develop your editorial strategy. You should also keep in mind that not all content has to be created fresh, you can get a lot of value from repurposing old content. Perhaps you have articles on your website, case studies, whitepapers, or other forms of content which can be shared using social technology.

Finally, test, evaluate and adjust your social media marketing plan. The most important thing to understand about your social media marketing plan is that it should be constantly changing. As new channels emerge, you may want to add them to your plan. As you attain goals, you may need to adjust them or find new goals for each channel.

As you scale your business, you might need to grow your social presence for different branches or countries. Rewrite your strategy to reflect your latest insight. This is a plan that is meant to change, so be flexible. As you move forward, you may discover that some tactics are not working as well as you thought they would. Try to adapt quickly and introduce the new changes to your overall strategy. An intelligent approach to apply new-edge social media tactics and an emotional approach to know what your consumers want can drive a brand, resulting in social media excellence.

In a survey conducted by Kenscio, marketers’ second highest priority as a reliable marketing tool went to Email Marketing (59%), and preceded by Social Media (76%). Interestingly, Social Media Marketing has achieved overwhelming response globally within just a couple of years in contrast to more than two decades of existence since email technology was developed in early 90s. Social Media Marketing in the last couple of years has grown like no other, easily drawing the lion’s share of every marketing campaign; such has been its impact in so less time. However, it’s not that Email Marketing is lagging behind. As a matter of fact, ‘Email’ has become an integral part of day-to-day life and is too common to talk about.

The evolution of Email Marketing is slow but it’s steady so far. But with increasing competition at a time when an active subscriber is bombarded with thousands of promotional emails in a month, the future of email marketing in terms of its usability and deliverability will depend on several aspects of its logical and technological architecture. A few important aspects demonstrate what will shape the future of email marketing.

1) Personalization: Personalization imparts a sense of purpose and warmth to Email Communications. A well personalized Email responds to subscribers based on individual behavioral attributes. The gist of ‘one-to-one communication’ in Email marketing actually lies in successful implementation of personalization tactics in emails.

2) Dynamic Content: Based on individual subscribers, email messages can be variant. This variation can be used to create dynamic content to target subscribers based on their online behaviors, past purchase behavior, email open behavior etc. Innovative approach to create dynamic content in emails can provide marketers tremendous business value in terms of reaching out right customers with right offers.

3) In-email Transactions: Email transactions by clicking in the embedded hyperlinks and re-directing subscribers to external landing page might become a history in near future. Quick transactions for special offers, purchase, form etc. can be enabled in the email body itself which will cut down the process time drastically and will make transactions hassle-free.

4) Automation and Integration with other channels: Innovative approach to integrate with newer channels/versions of platforms is one key issue faced by email marketers. The ability to work seamlessly with multiple channels can increase reliability of email marketing platforms to a great extent.

5) Open-time based customization: Intuitive approach to understand “email behavior’ can help in multiplying email effectiveness. Email open time, clicking behavior, subject lines impact etc. are essential benchmarks for marketers. They provide whole lot of informative understanding of email subscribers and their behavior. If a consumer gets a promotional email at the moment of opening the inbox in the morning, it can have a better impact than hundreds of other promotional mails remaining unread. To make it technologically viable, a data-driven approach to deploy email is the only way out. Innovation can give the further ride to success.

6) Micro-segmentation: Micro-segmentation has contributed immensely to e-commerce brands in terms of devising an appropriate targeting strategy. Different theoretical models such as Clustering, RFM Analysis, Predictive Analysis, CLV Analysis etc. play pivotal role in sharpening targeting of consumers with right messages. It will be worth-watching how email marketers take competitive advantage through synchronic Micro-segmentation and Email Marketing strategy.

7) Email Triggers: Email triggers are response based automation’s of the recipient. Building recipient communication and engagement based workflows in an automated way creates an expected and compelling relation between the brand and the customer. By personalizing emails, the content of transactional messages can deliver greater value to customers by being contextual in communication. Optimization of images/creatives of emails based on highest clicks is one example of such email triggers. How cutting edge technology can imbibe theoretical aspect of modern day marketing like urgency and social proofing in email marketing through technological advancement in future is going to be the key to competitive advantage.

8) Mobile based approach to email marketing:Email Marketingin the last couple of decades has come a long way. Mobile has already overtaken Desktop in terms of most widely used devices to open emails. Adding to this, mobile application based approach to deliver value to customers is ubiquitous now. Synchronizing emails with such Apps is going to change the way of email interaction in mobile. Not many days are left when social buttons will include WhatsApp like button (if the email is opened in mobile) for interacting with a brand through WhatsApp.

9) Responsive Design: Besides desktop, there are dozens of different devices for opening emails. Being adaptable to each and every kind of device specific resolution is very essential to avoid distortion of designs/content of emails.

10) Innovate, Innovate and Innovate: This is the basic framework of all the points mentioned above. Email is the most reliable tool for reaching out to customers with latest news/offers/deals for a marketer. Innovation will keep email marketers moving up the learning curve. All new technologies become redundant after one point of time (we get used to it). An email marketer’s ability to keep an email fresh, live and new every time it arrives in your inbox will define whether you will open the email or not.

With these evolving advancements in context to email technology, email marketing is here to stay. Undoubtedly, innovation is key to its survival considering the increasing marketing and socializing platforms. If wrapped by the right technology and for the right market at the right time, email marketing will continue to create ripples among the marketing fraternity and shall be regarded as one of the topmost effective means of marketing.